


Everybody Lives

by servantofclio



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short "Everybody Lives" AU for Mass Effect. Seriously. Everybody lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody Lives

Shepard lives.

After the Battle of the Citadel, she passes up a mission to chase down geth and spends most of her time in the interrogation chamber, where the prisoner—

Let’s back up.

Saren lives.

Wrex and Garrus maybe enjoyed restraining the ex-Spectre a little too much, but they got the job done; and then Saren told them to take out as much of the cybernetics as they could, and he was begging but he managed to make it sound a bit like an order anyway. So the doctors took out as many of the implants as they could without killing him, including his biotic implant, and now, Shepard is told, he still goes into screaming fits sometimes, but most of the time he just talks.

It grates on her a little bit that the Council still takes him more seriously than they do her, but in the meantime, there are some smart scientists in labs studying the remains of Saren’s implants, and Saren himself tells them every damn thing he learned from Sovereign before the Fifth Fleet blew that fucker up.

(Sovereign does not live.)

And Shepard didn’t quite expect it, thought Saren might clam up on her, because after all, it’s _her_ , but she could see the fight go out of him the minute he saw her co-interrogator.

Nihlus Kryik may not be what he once was after his injuries, but he can stare his old mentor down.

He takes over more of the interrogating as time goes on, and Shepard goes to visit Jenkins, who’s finally gotten released from the hospital, and she wishes him well even though she’s not sure she needs him on her squad any more. And she has dinner with Kaidan and Ashley, who are both itching to get back into the fight. (Two squads on Virmire, including Nihlus—Kaidan and Ashley both live.) Garrus says he’s available any time she needs another gun, too, but Tali’s gone back to the fleet with all the geth data Shepard can give her, and Wrex seems to be revisiting his old haunts on Tuchanka, and Liara, of course, is spending every spare moment at her mother’s bedside, because Benezia’s still very not well, after everything.

Their next mission doesn’t have a lot of shooting, which is very disappointing to Ashley and Garrus. Just getting to where they’re going was enough of a diplomatic nightmare, though, very embarrassing for the matriarchs, of course, to have Saren and Benezia out them like that. But they get to Thessia, and it turns out the Temple of Athame does conceal an intact Prothean VI, very interesting, and Shepard’s never seen Liara so furious or so embarrassed.

The VI is immensely helpful, though, points them in the direction of all kinds of interesting plans in the Prothean archives on Mars and elsewhere, and Shepard finds she spends less and less time on the battlefield and more and more time up to her eyeballs in Prothean artifacts and schematics, working with the scientific team. She misses it, she misses the team, she tells them all so when she sends messages, but they’re doing great without her, gone on to new plum assignments: Garrus a newly minted Spectre and Ash in N7 training and Kaidan promoted. She just doesn’t get to see them enough. Shepard dates one of the scientists for a while, but it doesn’t last.

They work through all their data, and examine the wreckage of Sovereign with a fine-toothed comb. Shepard has to stop more than one sabotage attempt, plus there’s an assassination attempt on Shepard (and she’s nothing but annoyed to realize the would-be assassin is an ex-N7 named Leng, a disgrace to the rank). Doesn’t matter, though; they figure out how to use a mass relay to direct a disrupting signal right into the heart of the Reaper fleet, disabling them all, and when Dr. Kenson pegs the Bahak relay as the Reapers’ destination, well, there they go. Covertly, of course, but it’s the first time Shepard’s been aboard the _Normandy_ in years, and she missed it.

Their device works, much to everyone’s relief.

Billions of people live. Most of them never realize, or maybe never quite believe, just how bad it could have gotten.

Shepard sleeps soundly at night. Sometimes she regrets how her career was derailed from marine commander to Prothean expert and technical consultant. Still, she’s satisfied in her success. It never occurs to her to regret the lives she never touched along the way.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This came in as an anonymous prompt on tumblr, and I wasn't sure what to do with it at first, so thanks to tarysande and w0rdinista for encouraging a certain, very literal, line of thought.


End file.
